Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Calgary Southeast.
I rise on behalf of the people from Okanagan—Coquihalla on this prebudget debate to express their concern over the tax and spend mentality of the Liberal government. When back in my riding I talk to my constituents, I communicate with my constituents and we do that through a variety of means. We hold town hall meetings. We publish weekly editorials in the newspapers. We ask for feedback. We get that feedback.
One of the messages that most often comes to me from my constituents, the message I try to relay in the House, is again and again people are saying the spending priorities of the government are out of whack with the rest of the country. That is evident in a recent public opinion poll that showed Canadians do not trust the government in the way it spends their tax dollars.
Canadians want a government that is going to look after the budget in a responsible and reasonable fashion.
They want balanced books. They want lower taxes so that we can create jobs in this country. With regard to the massive debt that has been built up, over $600 billion by Liberals and Tories for years now, they want to make sure that we start paying off that mortgage and look after that debt problem.
The reason is if we can tackle that debt problem and get taxes down, we can lay the course and the groundwork for a strong future for the country, for our children and our grandchildren.
What I would like to do today with my time is talk a bit about the priorities that I mentioned earlier and a few of the programs. I am not going to say that this money should not be spent, but I am going to point out some areas where the government spends money and it seems to be out of sync with the rest of the country on how it would like to see that money spent.
For instance, I am going to talk now about the $26.4 million spent on a parole system in this country, a system that has proven to fail time and time again. I will give a specific example to the House and Canadians.
In my riding on September 7 there was a double murder, the murder of Cecilia and Tammy Grono. They were murdered by a person by the name of Kevin Machell who was on day parole in Calgary. The rules of Corrections Canada state very clearly that a person who is tardy or does not show up at his halfway house should be reported within 10 minutes to one hour.
This is a shocking case because it took 24 hours for any authorities to notify anybody of the non-appearance of Kevin Machell. In that 24 hour period he travelled to Summerland, my home town, and murdered Cecilia and Tammy Grono while Tammy's two and four year old children sat and watched in horror. It is a terrible case. Kevin Machell three months later is still on the loose in this country. Maybe he is not in this country any longer. We do not know but he is still on the loose. Those two preschool children will be spending their Christmas under police protection.
Where did the $26.4 million go to protect the Grono family in this country and all the other families who have lived under this type of system? It is horrendous that this could happen. It has been traumatic for the family, it has been traumatic for the people in my riding of Okanagan-Coquihalla.
The problem is not the $26.4 million. If we had a system that worked, I would say spend $30 million or $40 million. What is happening is that this is a system that is so bent on trying to rehabilitate the criminal, it does not look at the real fact of what a parole system is for. It is to protect law-abiding citizens in this country. The safety of Canadians is being ignored. That has to change.
I would also like to talk about another circumstance in my riding with the department of Indian affairs. We spend some $4 billion on the department of Indian affairs. With that money the government is responsible for certain objectives and responsibilities. Yet one of the responsibilities this government does not have is to provide assistance for individuals who are renting property on an Indian reserve.
I was shocked to find that in my riding there is a mobile home park situated on an Indian reserve. Two months ago the people living there received their eviction notices. They were told to move out just before Christmas. They are low income families. The $4 billion we spend on the department of Indian affairs does not protect them because there is no law in this land that says there is a level playing field for people who rent property on an Indian reserve.
If persons rent property let us say on an ordinary piece of land owned by a private citizen, they fall under the provincial rentals act but not if they rent property on an Indian reserve.
What has this government done to change that? It has done nothing, not a thing. The $4 billion did not help those people who live at Driftwood Mobile Home Park nor the other three mobile home parks where people are going to be evicted in the dead of winter.
Why has the government not taken up the initiative to make sure that there is a rental act federally for people who rent land on Indian reserves? There is no excuse for this. I will make sure, as a private member, that in the new year I will introduce such legislation in this House.
My time is short and there are a number of things we could talk about today prior to Christmas about how the government spends its money and the misguided way it does it. I have come to know many of the Liberal members across the way, the NDP members and Conservative members, all of the people in the House. They come here with good ideas and are good people in many respects.
However, what the federal Liberals are doing is inexcusable to the Canadian people. Time and time again public opinion polls show that Canadians do not trust this government and will not trust this government. I am not saying that the federal Liberals are stupid or bad people. They are just wrong in what they do with our hard earned tax money.
I will point out one more example which is the need for search and rescue helicopters. This is a debate that has been going on for close to six years when we take in the time that the Conservatives spent on it as well. However, here we have a federal Liberal government that is not concerned about the safety of Canadians when it comes to search and rescue from coast to coast. No, it is busy in the back rooms with its public relations folks sucking back cappuccinos and trying to figure out how it is going to explain the helicopter that it is going to buy.
Well, that is unacceptable. It was unacceptable last year in the pre-budget debate and it is unacceptable today. Our military needs the equipment when the government sends them out to do a job. I was in the military and they are good people. They do the best with what they have. However, a government is irresponsible when it does not give them the tools they need.
Just a couple of weeks ago we saw another example. A young man who went to Croatia in service of the country for peacekeeping was not given a helmet. It is outrageous that he was not given a helmet. His armoured patrol vehicle, which is not armoured at all, rolled down a hill and landed on top of him. He now has brain damage. We sent these people on peacekeeping missions without the proper equipment. That is inexcusable by this government.
I can see it is time now to wrap up very quickly and I will wrap up. However, I do want to say, for goodness sake, the Canadian public is sick and tired of the extreme uncaring positions that the government takes. It is time for a balanced and reasonable approach when it comes to the things that Canadians need and want. When it comes to social programs, criminal justice, the military or any department, make a choice, but let us start spending our money properly.
Canadians can laugh about it or cry about it, but for goodness sake let us not ignore the problem. Let us move into the 21st century on a reasonable footing for the future of Canadians.
